December 16, 2022
We may have avoided a government shutdown today – but another one is scheduled for next Friday.
Thanks congress.
But what is a government shutdown? So many of you have asked me and it’s probably not what you think.
To understand how a shutdown works, first you have to understand how our country operates. The United States operates on a fiscal year from October 1st to September 30th. And the only job Congress really has is to keep the government functioning. Think about your own life, you probably have a budget plan for how you’re going to keep your household running throughout the year. Well, Congress has to do the same. They have to pass a law every single year to come up with a spending plan for each department and agency in our country for those 12 months.
And when those 12 months are up – if there’s no new spending law, the government shuts down. Because those departments and agencies don’t know what they’re allowed to spend.
So that leads me to the actual shutdown. What happens?
Well, depends on how long the shutdown is. We could get a partial or a full shutdown. In a full shutdown every non-essential government agency stops operating. The Small Business Administration stops helping small businesses with loans and services, Federal Housing Administration stops approving applications for home loans, the CDC and FDA have to cut back on their operations. VA customer service stops and our veterans disability claims stop getting approved. Then every single department and agency…think social security, defense, transportation all of it, have to classify their millions of employees as essential or non-essential. Those non-essential employees are put on unpaid furlough. Basically, they’re laid off. With no pay. Our military members have to show up to work not knowing if they’re going to get paid or not. Same with air traffic controllers and TSA agents – in that past that has strained air travel. Think about that for a second, imagine you having to go to work and doing the job and not knowing when you’ll get paid for that work. It could be weeks it could be months. In the last shutdown – 850,000 federal employees out of the 2.1 million were furloughed. Then of course, the national parks, national monuments and Smithsonian museums all close.
Now, if there’s a shutdown, your social security checks will continue but no new social security cards will be issued so no new accounts will be accepted…same for Medicare. SNAP benefits are still funded but sending out those benefits gets harder. And your mail will still get delivered, because the post office is – as we’ve discussed before is self-funded.
You know who keeps getting paid? Congress. In a government shutdown, according to the constitution, they still get a paycheck.
I’m sure you’re thinking lawmakers threaten a shutdown all the time do they actually have the nerve to do it?
Oh yeah. We’ve had several government shutdowns.
The most recent was during the Trump presidency. For 35 days the us government was shutdown (Dec 22, 2018 – Jan 25, 2019). That was also the longest single shutdown in modern history. But we’ve had lots of other shutdowns. In fact, every modern president Reagan, Clinton and Obama all had a least one shutdown where employees were furloughed.
